Despite not having a place on our list of best graphics cards, the Radeon RX 6500 XT has stuck around for a while now — and ASRock has just launched the Radeon RX 6500 XT Phantom Gaming 8GB OC (RX6500XT PG 8GO), a custom version of the GPU with twice as much memory as the original.
Like any custom Radeon RX 6500 XT, ASRock's iteration features the same Navi 24 (Beige Goby) silicon with 16 enabled Compute Units (CUs), amounting to 1,024 shaders. The Radeon RX 6500 XT Phantom Gaming 8GB OC has a factory overclock, meaning the shaders run at 2,420 MHz — 4.8% faster than the reference specifications. ASRock has binned the graphics card's game clock and boost clock for 2,685 MHz and 2,825 MHz, representing a 2.9% and 0.4% uplift.
Modern games look better than ever, but they also require more graphics power and more memory. The original Radeon RX 6500 XT only has 4GB of GDDR6 memory at 18 Gb/s, which is underwhelming by today's standards. So, ASRock has infused the Radeon RX 6500 XT Phantom Gaming 8GB OC with twice as much memory. The chips still run at 18 Gb/s via a 64-bit memory interface, so the memory bandwidth remains at 143.9 GB/s. So while the Radeon RX 6500 XT Phantom Gaming 8GB OC has more memory, it doesn't offer more bandwidth — and that's a potentially serious problem.
